Fingerpicking for absolute beginners

Play melodies and basslines together

The beauty of fingerpicking is that you can play melodies and basslines together using open chord shapes. We've got two examples for you here, based around open position A, D and E chords.

You can practise each example in full or break them down into their melody and bass parts. If you break them down, don't change the fingering – stay around those chord shapes. Otherwise when you play the full parts you'll have practised the wrong fingering!

Example 2 is much trickier than Example 1 so take the time to learn the melody and bass in this way. The picking is trickier too, particularly on the semiquaver rhythms and wherever you have to cross to another string in the melody. A basic rule of thumb is to try not to pick with the same finger for consecutive notes.

Next page: tab for the video examples

Example 1: simple melody with bassline

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Practise this example chord by chord. Once you're comfortable with the first A chord, move on to the D, and so on.

Example 2: complex melody with bassline

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Compare the melody here with Example 1. Try to work out where the extra notes are and pick the melody by alternating your i and m fingers.